This article features a multilingual family literacy project to enhance family engagement in children's literacy development. First, the authors expand the emerging framework of translanguaging ...beyond the individual competency toward a collaborative practice across family/community members and diverse sign systems. Then, the authors describe how a multilingual family literacy project created a community translanguaging space that maximized leveraging of family funds of knowledge: collective community semiotic repertoires. Participating families (parents, children, and extended family/community members) collectively built larger communicative repertoires by connecting across individual linguistic, multimodal, and cultural capacities and experiences to create each unique family storybook. Finally, the authors provide suggestions on designing and implementing community-based family literacy projects.
Fathers’ engagement in their children’s education has increased over the years, yet we know less about fathers’ perspectives and engagement in children’s literacy development. The authors focused on ...a fatherhood reading program that was initiated in several Title 1 schools in a large school district in the Southeastern United States. Findings are based on fathers’ reading in classrooms in one elementary school. Based on interviews with teachers, a focus group with fathers, and observations of fathers’ reading in the classroom, several themes were found: a positive male role model for students, a reported increase in student motivation for reading, fathers’ confidence in their parenting role, and fathers’ respect for volunteer reading at school. Ways that teachers can organize a similar program at their schools are presented, along with implications of the findings for teaching practice and research.
Underresourced communities often have limited access to print and materials to promote children's early literacy development. Recognizing that the neighborhood is a unit of social change, ...organizations that engage families in early reading and learning with their children, therefore, have increasingly become part of the community landscape. Recently, efforts to promote early literacy have found families in a less conventional place: the local laundromat. The authors report on a study of six laundromats in low‐income communities, three of which were transformed to include literacy‐related play centers and three of which remained business as usual. Results indicated dramatic increases in literacy‐related activity among young children as compared with control sites, demonstrating the potential of these sites to enhance children's opportunity to learn.
Growing Together Filipiak, Danielle; Caraballo, Limarys
Journal of adolescent & adult literacy,
November/December 2019, Volume:
63, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and ...communities.
In this qualitative case study, the authors explored the responses of seven Mexican American mothers during a bilingual (Spanish–English) parent book club with a chapter book from their children’s ...elementary school literacy curriculum. The authors sought to better understand the findings of a previous study in which parents expressed new learning during comprehension‐related activities. Specifically, the authors examined how these women came to better understand their identities as literate individuals capable of assisting peers and their children’s literacy learning. Analysis of interviews and book club session transcripts, written and artistic artifacts, and researcher reflective journal entries revealed that during reflective dialogue, participants assumed all of Brooks and Browne’s (2012) homeplace reader positions (ethnic group, community, family, and peers) and the additional positions of empowerment and action.
This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and ...communities.
The authors explore the possibility that school literacy practices sent home as homework are changing family reading interactions by adding to the tasks that teachers expect parents to undertake. The ...authors consider how reading, formerly an elective leisure practice between parents and their children, has been reorganized and how this positions parents differently. The authors also examine teachers’ views on the importance of parents reading to their children and teachers’ expectations of parents to support school literacy practices in the form of homework. Evidence that teachers now depend on parents to support school‐based literacy practices and how this serves to change the nature of literacy practices in the home is discussed.
This study introduces parents’ roles in the community Korean–English bilingual family literacy program named Family Storytime. It was offered at the Korean church for 30 minutes during lunch time on ...Sundays over 3 months. The Korean parents played two major roles: facilitators and participants. As facilitators, the parents advertised the literacy program to other Korean families, set up the room, managed children’s behaviors, and assisted bookplay activities. The Korean parents were active participants who responded to the book, interacted with children, and gave positive feedback to children. The parents’ heritage–language skills and funds of knowledge were valuable resources at the Family Storytime sessions. This study offers an example for how bilingual parents can be involved in family literacy in schools and communities.
To positively influence students’ behavior and social relationships in the school and community settings, teachers can support students during early interventions and active conversations. ...Conversations held during class time that use picturebooks and restorative practice activities can be an appropriate way to support student learning and engagement. Lessons and activities can be implemented through any subject and integrated into classroom discussions to support students’ relationships, personal growth, well‐being, and behaviors. Incorporating discussions surrounding picturebooks with specific messages relating to social skills or situations in the classroom or community can support a restorative justice framework. The authors present ideas and activities relating to using picturebooks while upholding a restorative environment.
Enjoyment of reading books is related to reading proficiency, and fostering students’ enjoyment of reading is imperative to support continued reading engagement. However, not all students understand ...that reading is important, and not all students are regularly engaged in recreational reading. Children typically read for pleasure less often as they age, leading researchers to seek effective ways that social influences can support them to be lifelong readers beyond the early years. Parents can play an important role in communicating the continued importance of reading and fostering positive attitudes toward reading. However, after independent reading skill acquisition, parents may become a less potent encouraging and supportive force. The authors explore older students’ experiences of both independent and shared reading and their perception of parental support, involvement, and modeling to highlight potential roles that parental figures can play in reading beyond the early years.
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